How Porsche hacked the financial system and made a killing (2009)

http://radian.org/notebook/porsche/

by mootothemax • 15 years ago

354 92 15 years ago

radian.org

0x124• 15 years ago

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2009/gb2009...

http://www.zigwheels.com/news-features/news/volkswagen-acqui...

nicpottier• 15 years ago

Thanks for linking those, makes you realize that those brilliant financial guys at Porsche maybe aren't ALWAYS brilliant.

Pretty crazy swing there, remind me never to buy stock in either.

0x124• 15 years ago

The attempt of Porsche to take over VW has gone into history as one of the best examples of financial over-confidence. Porsche was doing really good and decided to bite of more than they could chew, nearly went bust as a result and ended up being bought by the party they originally sought to acquire.

Wiedeking left with a 50 million golden parachute so I don't think he's complaining.

nraynaud2• 15 years ago

I'm not sure it's about being brilliant, it's about betting the house. G. Sorros bet his house and won, Porsche bet their house and lost. It's all about trying, failing and trying something else if it fails.

eftpotrm2• 15 years ago

It's also worth noting, though, that the fall-out of this cost Porsche dearly:

In its efforts to acquire a majority holding in Volkswagen AG, Porsche built up a large debt burden, aggravated by taxes due on very large paper profits from Volkswagen AG options. By July 2009, Porsche was faced with debts exceeding 10 billion euros. The supervisory board of Porsche finally agreed to a number of arrangements whereby the Qatar Investment Authority would inject a large amount of capital, and Porsche would be merged with Volkswagen Group. On 23 July 2009, Michael Macht was appointed CEO, to replace Wendelin Wiedeking, who is expected to receive a compensation package of 50 million euros.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche#Corporate_restructuring

Estragon• 15 years ago

Everybody loses! A paragon of free-market efficiency!

Robin_Message2• 15 years ago

Except the Qatari royal family. Remember, capitalism leads to freedom!

jerf• 15 years ago

Would you prefer a system where stupid decisions and bad risks are instead rewarded?

Free markets are about giving feedback like that. They aren't magical ways of making people never make bad decisions. And neither is your preferred $ECONOMIC_SYSTEM, whatever it may. If it's claiming to be one, it's lying.

j_m_f• 15 years ago

Also, this is less of a clever hack of the financial system and more of an example of plain market manipulation.

nasmorn• 15 years ago

Pretty ridiculous to kill yourself over losing a round of really expensive poker. Especially considering Merckle could probably command a higher monthly budget for the rest of his live than I can. And my life is pretty nice no death wishes here. He should have probably have the news sink in a little to gain some perspective on it.

borism• 15 years ago

probably nothing to do with monetary damage itself and everything to do with reputation damage.

44Aman• 15 years ago

I'd rather take a hit to my reputation than a hit in the face with a bullet.

dimitar• 15 years ago

Suicide and mental deceases that cause it aren't very rational. Plus he might have had many personal/personality problems and the whole loss thing was just something that was the last drop.

steve-howard• 15 years ago

I concur with this. I've had a lot of history of serious depression, and when people say "just don't commit suicide, duh" it shows a misunderstanding of the motives. There's always something going wrong in one's life, but I would say it's only the tip of the iceberg when someone commits suicide.

MarkPNeyer3• 15 years ago

people commit suicide in order to protect themselves from the pain they go through on a daily basis.

that seems perfectly rational to me.

maxxxxx5• 15 years ago

This guy assumed responsibility at least. The Wall Street guys in 2008 demanded retention bonuses instead. I don't propose suicide but I would like to see CEOs being a bit more shocked when their actions turn out to be a total disaster. I think it would be better for the country.

nazar2• 15 years ago

I couldn't pass your comment without saying my opinion. Recently, I read a book about Steve Jobs. The book said that before Apple, Steve had "no money", and that was his main motive to start a company. What I am trying to say is, Steve had a place to live, and money so he can eat and drink, and money for transport and all those basic expenses. Here in my country, no money means really having no money. Recently I passed thru terrible times, without having money to even buy myself some food. It has gotten to the extend that I had to borrow shoes from friends for job interviews , and I had to walk from one edge of the city to another by foot just to get to those interviews. What I am trying to say, "no money" has different meaning to everyone. Even if Merckle could afford life thousand times better than mine or yours, it probably was very hard for him to face that failure of his. Btw, I will be having a job interview in one of construction companies this week, and one interview at US embassy. Hope this will work out for me :) <br> I tried several web startups here, and it didn't work out well, since internet is highly regulated here, and most people think that internet=IM. My parents haven't even seen a homepage of google. My mom thinks that internet is some company that magically gives you information about anything. For now, starting a web startup is mission impossible here. You can check out www.verihasap.com, or www.tolkunfm.com to see what kind of startups I'am talking about.

chubs• 15 years ago

Don't give up hope buddy: have you tried making a few iphone or android apps? Your english is perfect so i assume you could make apps for the english speaking market, it really could change your life.

epicviking• 15 years ago

Merckle was quite depressed at the time of his death. I don't think his death had anything to do with want for money, he lived quite modestly and didn't exactly lose everything.

anoother• 15 years ago

Judging by the other comments here, it seems that shortly after this was written, the financials went horribly awry for Porsche...

Anyone care to explain, preferably in a similarly understandable style as this article?

kitsune_• 15 years ago

There are tons of great DER SPIEGEL articles about this

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,637542,0...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,637243,0...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,623423,0...

pkteison• 15 years ago

Very simple. Porsche financed their stock buying with loans, but then credit essentially disappeared for everybody in 2009 and so they couldn't keep it up. 0x12 posted some good links earlier.

Same sort of reason why Ford did better than GM or Chrysler in America - Ford had secured lines of credit back in 2006 in either a fit of brilliance or luck, so when credit dried up in 2009 they could still borrow. The others couldn't get loans and had to take drastic action.

steve8918• 15 years ago

Ummmmmmm, this is a terrible article. They failed to point out that Porsche went heavily in debt in order to finance this "hack", and ended up getting bailed out and bought by VW.

It's ridiculous to say that Porsche "hacked the financial system and made a killing" when they essentially bankrupted themselves by doing so.

sek• 15 years ago

The financial crisis killed this project for Porsche, but the background is very difficult. In financial terms this didn't matter.

The funny thing in this whole Story was Ferdinand Piech, he has full control over VW as head of the board and was against this buyout. He also owned half of Porsche, so he was then owner of VW, but was also against it because Wideking would have gotten more power.

Both companies are bound together since the war, this whole action was about power between some industrial families.

They gained money in the bottom line, and some idiots with no insight made a bet against them.

Before this action was the Share of Porsche Holding 32.2% and now it is 50.74%. Look at the market cap and say again this was a failure.

LearnYouALisp• 15 years ago

For a moment there, I thought you said "Ferdinand Porsche"!

ankimal• 15 years ago

January 7, 2009 at 7:32 pm (Thats the date on the article). Cant blame him for not predicting the future.

biot• 15 years ago

I think the title was somewhat of a dark humor double entendre: "made a killing" might also refer to Merckle's death.

faizanaziz3• 15 years ago

So if the hedge fund managers lost money and Porsche lost money, so where did the money go?

To play this game both borrowed money, so both parties paid interests... So i guess the banks made money... Fits in with this article http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/13/news/goldman.earnings.report...

tedjdziuba• 15 years ago

Probably to Goldman Sachs.

dustingetz• 15 years ago

everyone lost money in 2009 =(

faizanaziz3• 15 years ago

Money does not disappear... It just hides in some peoples pockets :)

aqrashik• 15 years ago

I'm curious, what happens if you can't return stock that you've borrowed in order to short it? either because of a situation like this or simply because you went bankrupt due to bad debts.

Wouldn't this be a common scenario given the very nature of the risk?

nknight• 15 years ago

You pay money. A lot of it. And/or declare bankruptcy.

The "person" you borrowed the stock from may well lose out, but we're talking about huge institutional investors that lend stock thousands or millions of times a year, or even day, and the fees more than make up for the few losses they incur.

This is not fundamentally different than any other loan.

thematt• 15 years ago

If you're an individual retail investor, your broker won't let you leverage up that high and will likely require assets/cash as collateral against the margin account.

chollida1• 15 years ago

> I'm curious, what happens if you can't return stock that you've borrowed in order to short it?

It's similar to what happens when you can't pay your mortgage. If you are shorting you'll have to put up some margin( cash or cash equivalents representing some percentage of the dollar amount you shorted.)

if the short starts to move against you, you'll get a margin call and be required to put up more collateral.

Eventually if you can't pay you go bankrupt and your counterparty get's what they can in bankruptcy court.

Not surprisingly this is called counterparty risk and has become a big area of focus for risk managers recently.

fleitz• 15 years ago

This was hilarious, I was working for a company that supplied software to hedge funds at the the time. I was laughing my ass off that the hedge fund guys got taken so badly by a bunch of car makers. Looks like German financial engineering is as highly regarded as German automotive engineering.

rmc• 15 years ago

I doubt they are merely "a bunch of car makers", I assume Porsche, with lots of money, hires lots of smart financial experts to do deals like this. You can throw money at a problem and be a money expert.

T_S_2• 15 years ago

Nice example about how lack of information leads to volatility in markets. If you are looking for prescriptions to fix our financial markets, increasing transparency of trading would do wonders to eliminate speculation and refocus investors on value.

ArchD• 15 years ago

I'm not sure what precisely you mean by "transparency of trading". One of the common goals of trading is minimize the revelation of information about your intentions that other traders can exploit against you. Trading is like warfare--being transparent is not a strength.

Additionally, you can't just make one law that tells people to "be transparent." The enacted laws have to be specific in order to be meaningful. Because they are specific, people will find ways around them and continue playing the game.

T_S_2• 15 years ago

Trading of securities is a regulated market. The rules about what information is available to the market are a combination of tradition and regulation. But they are man-made and arbitrary. I argue that the current fashions in regulation starve the markets of information and contribute to crises.

I'll give you just one example. Large traders attempt to conceal their identity. This leads to a lot of gamesmanship, as you point out. If this information were released with every order placed then I would argue a lot of volume would dry up and volatility would decrease.

gavanwoolery2• 15 years ago

Am I the only one who noticed this:

"How Porsche hacked the financial system and MADE A KILLING"

"Betting the wrong way, Adolf Merckle TOOK HIS LIFE."

I'm all for dark humor, but isn't it a little sketchy to joke about suicide in your headline? (I'm guessing the headline was intentional, but who knows).

waqf• 15 years ago

You're all for dark humor? Forgive me, but if you don't even like wordplay on a "dark" topic, what kind of dark humor is it that you find acceptable?

gavanwoolery2• 15 years ago

I think the line for me would probably be between reality and fictional circumstances. In this circumstance, a real person actually took their life, which (at least to me) is not really a joking matter. On the other hand, if there were some joke about a fictional character involving suicide, I probably would not be (greatly) disturbed. I understand that not everybody would have this reaction, but I have known people who tried to commit suicide so it is a bit different for me I guess.

knieveltech2• 15 years ago

You definitely aren't the only one that noticed it, however, for the most part we're all adults here. I think we can handle it.

andjones• 15 years ago

For those interested in this kind of story, and manipulation of markets in general, one of the best books I've read on the subject, published in 1923: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

http://www.amazon.com/Reminiscences-Stock-Operator-Edwin-Lef...

atakan_gurkan• 15 years ago

It is also available on the Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/details/ReminiscencesOfAStockOperator

mathattack• 15 years ago

I am very surprised this was legal. Aren't there disclosure requirements? Certainly in the US if you acquire a stake of more than 5 or 10% you have to declare it.

dennisgorelik• 15 years ago

For hobbyist investor it's tempting to short some stocks which seem to be priced outrageously high.

In the past I've heard the term "Short Squeeze", but did not really pay attention.

This article demonstrates one of the risks of shorting.

0x124• 15 years ago

Small time investors advice for when you consider shorting stocks: don't.

How Porsche hacked the financial system and made a killing (2009)

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